Overview

An insecure configuration has been identified in some EMIs provided by Eucalyptus EuStore. The root password was left empty in certain situations potentially allowing for privilege escalation by system users. Updated images are now available. We recommend immediately replacing them with the newest version.

Description

As a part of Eucalyptus's EuStore image hardening effort, an insecure configuration, where the root password was left empty, has been identified in four EuStore EMIs. This problem is partly related to CVE-2013-2069, where a third-party tool used to generated EMIs was leaving the root password unset instead of locking it. An unset root password can allow for privilege escalation by users on any Eucalyptus instance instantiated from the affected EMI. None of the reported EMIs allowed remote root ssh using the empty password.

Workaround

Set or lock the root account password on any instance running from the affected EMI. To set the password, execute: